Moronic Opinions on Spam
Browsing some weblogs over the weekend I was reading Jenett.radio and came across a link to an article by Barry Dennis of NetWeb Inc. on CNET. To summarize, Mr. Dennis believes that spam is OK, doesn’t hurt anyone and we should fight for people’s rights to use spam.
Rather than simply taking my point of view on this article, I’d advise you to read the article for yourself. (There’s also some very good analysis of it online)
My take is that Mr. Diller is one of the reasons that marketing and public relations pro’s get a bad reputation. His argument is facile, and looks to me like it has been written to purely provoke response. I can’t believe he really believes what he has written. PR people who have their e-mail address on websites and press releases automatically get added to thousands of spam lists. These lists sell products and services of no interest to the vast majority of recipients. Collecting e-mail on the road now takes three or four times as long, the volume continues to grow and e-mail software rule engines struggle to manage the deluge.
Mr. Diller compares traditional direct mail with spam, but the two have little or no similarity. Spammers incur relatively no costs and I have never received porn offers in paper spam – thank god.
As the volume of e-mail climbs so too does the volume of untargeted spam. Anyone who advocates spam, is in the words of my four year old nephew, a complete muppet (FLASH warning).
Murphy's Law 